The Art of Caesar's Bellum Civile
Literature, Ideology, and Community

Comprehensive exploration of the artistic properties and intellectual complexity of Caesar's Bellum Civile, showing the interaction of literature and politics.

Luca Grillo (Author)

9781107470675, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 26 March 2015

234 pages, 1 table
22.9 x 15.1 x 1.2 cm, 0.34 kg

'… it is only through the close reading of [Caesar's] narrative that [his] Bellum Civile impresses, through its intricate and artistic propaganda - pure but unsimple. [Grillo's] study is superb at teasing out its complexities.' W. Jeffrey Tatum, Journal of Roman Studies

Traditional approaches have reduced Caesar's Bellum Civile to a tool for teaching Latin or to one-dimensional propaganda, thereby underestimating its artistic properties and ideological complexity. Reading strategies typical of scholarship on Latin poetry, like intertextuality, narratology, semantic, rhetorical and structural analysis, cast a new light on the Bellum Civile: Ciceronian language advances Caesar's claim to represent Rome; technical vocabulary reinforces the ethical division between 'us' and the 'barbarian' enemy; switches of focalization guide our perception of the narrative; invective and characterization exclude the Pompeians from the Roman community, according to the mechanisms of rhetoric; and the very structure of the work promotes Caesar's cause. As a piece of literature interacting with its cultural and socio-political world, the Bellum Civile participates in Caesar's multimedia campaign of self-fashioning. A comprehensive approach, such as has been productively applied to Augustus' program, locates the Bellum Civile at the interplay between literature, images and politics.

Introduction. Between ancient and modern approaches: admirers and detractors of Caesar
1. The swift and the slow: Caesar's art of characterization
2. The great contest: constantia, innocentia, pudor, and virtus
3. Redefining loyalty
4. The limits and risks of Caesar's leniency
5. The barbarization of the enemy
6. Two army-communities and their effect on the Roman people
7. Shaping the future of Rome: the architecture of the Bellum Civile
Appendix 1. Chronology of the Civil War (pre-Julian calendar) and narrative structure of the Bellum Civile
Appendix 2. Composition, publication and genre of the Bellum Civile
Appendix 3. The manuscript tradition of the Bellum Civile. Opening, end and book division.

Subject Areas: Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]